Tony Allen

It’s an absolute barren wasteland trying to sift through the 151-200 ranks, akin to that 60-year-old retiree scanning a remote beach with his metal detector. Bleep! Bleep! Eureka I found a dime! But none of these guys are good enough to get dimebags!

We’re finally wrapping up the top 200 (Rank 1-10 | Rank 11-20 | Rank 21-50 | Rank 51-75 | Rank 76-100 | Rank 101-150), with most of these guys untouchable in 12ers. However, there is some upside to be had with your last-pick fliers and hopefully help out with the deeper leagues. The deep ballers. “I’m balls deep in sleepers!” If only that were the case – a lot of these guys are likely duds or rooks that won’t see enough PT. “I’m balls deep in DNPs!” So remember upside is a big factor when you get this late, as no one wants to be balls deep in O.J. Mayo‘s 20 minutes off the bench…

If you disagree with these ranks, be sure to put your fantasy acumen to the test in the Razzball Commenter Leagues! We need more commissioners and leagues, so sign up a league today, it takes literally a minute – I stop-watched myself – and face off against the best fantasy basketball community around! Prizes and me shaming myself on YouTube abound!

Back to it, here’s the Top 200 for the 2015-16 Fantasy Basketball Season:

Ah, the late-round fliers! Which I think is “fliers”. A lot of the time, I almost write it “flyers”. Zach LaVine is a late round flyer! Eesh, being a married man makes you start getting reallllll corny with the jokes.

So as I’ve mentioned a few times getting through the top 100 (Rank 1-10 | Rank 11-20 | Rank 21-50 | Rank 51-75 | Rank 76-100), there just isn’t many warm bodies out there to call “JB’s late sleepers”. And, well, a lot of that is because I have guys that are ranked in the 100s on Yahoo and ESPN in my mid-rounds (cough, Jordan Clarkson – ESPN 99 Yahoo 144, what the hey?! aherm, cough cough – I’ve caught the plague!), while just as much is the lack of sexy rookies in good situations. Jahlil Okafor is awful for fantasy. D’Angelo Russell loves talking 401ks with Josh Smith by the turnovers at the breakfast buffet. Stanley Johnson looks awesome, but Detroit has a bigger wing mix than Bdubs. Asian zing – that one my jam!

With these final rounds of players, it’s also important to factor in league size. These ranks are [hoping to tailor] for a 12-team league, so I’ll reach for a tad more upside the later we go than go for stability. Tristan Thompson is going to be mad consistent for some points and boards for the very deep leagues, but lordy he’ll be unownable in a 12er. You’re fired! Can’t believe this Trump stuff is still going on… Anyway, here’s the Top 150 for the 2015-16 Fantasy Basketball Season:

There’s some sort of postseason going on, Stephen Curry is flying through the air, Klay Thompson is luckily OK after a Vincent Van Gough scare, there’s only two teams left… but all of that is less exciting to us than the new blood to enter the 2015-16 Fantasy player pool! As we’ve done for the second straight year (is two years considered a tradition yet?!), Slim and I mocked the first round of the 2015 NBA Draft by alternating picks for their respective teams with a fantasy outlook for each rook. 2014 didn’t… um… go quite to plan. But hey! We got a couple right and this year doesn’t quite offer the top-to-bottom talent as 2014. With a little bit more of an even playing field, I have a feeling this Draft will feature even more trades and more surprising risers and fallers… Hopefully we get a good portion of the lottery right! The optimist in me is ready ta go! Here’s our 2015 Mock NBA Draft:

Woooo, Jimmy Buckets is back! And Tom Thibodeau does what Tom Thibodeau does… Runs his guys to death.

After missing exactly 3 weeks with his elbow injury, Jimmy Butler returned last night and played a ridiculous 39-and-a-half minutes for 19/9/1/0/0. Almost 40 minutes?! And he shot 6-20!? Sure he’s taken a ton of shots the past week to be sure the elbow is healthy, but the aggression in that 7-10 FT really solidifies he should be 100% the rest of the way. That is, until Tibs plays him 63 minutes in a 3-OT game! Sheesh, I gotta wonder if I’ll ever be huge on Bulls again… Derrick Rose and all-a-dat, Joakim Noah goes through injury spells… And Tibs refuses to run his starters on any sort of minutes limits. I’m more posing the thought than really setting any personal beliefs in my fantasy bedrock, but Rose for sure I could never draft. You can call that Fred Flintstone because it’ll make my Fantasy Bedrock! I don’t think I’m using that lyric right… Here’s what else went down last night in fantasy basketball action:

We’re into week 2 of the standard H2H playoffs, moving into the semis, and the squads with bye weeks are hoping to avoid the layover letdown. It’s like the NCAA Football championship thingy, the playoffs or bracket or 4-team finals or whatnot, who knows anymore?! But they have to wait like 4 months from their final regular season game to the title! That’s how long this week has seemed for my sitting around, lazy, bored bye week teams (speaking vicariously of course, I had zero!). Luckily it’s now how you enter the playoffs but how you exit, and with only two weeks left, you gotta ride the hot ThrAGNOFs! Bojan Bogdanovic fits the bill to a T (did I say that right?) with 12+ points in 4 straight and 17+ in 3 of 4. Also has chipped in multi-treys in the past 3 and if treys or points are a need, it’s time to ThrAGNOF! Why you don’t pay for these guys, as they literally grow on trees. Seriously, Bogdanovic’s great uncle was Groot. Here’s what else went down over the weekend in fantasy basketball action:

Wow, big upset last night as the Pistons beat the Gizz 105-95. I had “Grizz” typoed but laughed too hard to fix it…

And leading the way in running the Gizz out of Detroit was Reggie Jackson‘s Goromotaro! Well, not really, 20/20 in Pts/Dimes doesn’t have an official Razzball name… 20 dimes is a double dimebag though! Wait, no one gets those, it goes up to a quarter… Can’t really complain that R-Jax didn’t get to 25 assists, but yeah, focus JB! I wonder what could’ve flared up my ADD!

With my boyfriend Kentavious Caldwell-Pope hitting so many shots (not doing much else though in a 24/0/1/0/0 line), making 10-16 FG and scoring 16 Pts in the 3rd quarter, R-Jax piled up a ton of dimes on jumpers. In the 3rd alone he had 6 dimes on 20+ foot FGM – 4 to KCP. Helps when your fellow shooters are hot! Just ask Stephen Curry how his season is going… R-Jax has certainly had his ups and downs, and didn’t even have a single assist against the Jazz on Saturday! I wanna say it was all due to Rudy Gobert, but if he was D-ing up R-Jax then Dante Exum would be on Andre Drummond! I’m not depending on high-volume dimes here on out, but when R-Jax is in his lows, remember he was a pickup for a lot of his owners. So just thank your lucky stars for last night and enjoy the wave without putting the R-Jax on the pedestal, the underlining message from The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Or else you let the Gizz win! Here’s what else went down last night in fantasy basketball action:

The tennis balls are off the legs, the HurryCane back in the closet, the pre-game meal eaten at 5:00 AM at the early bird special – we’ve got Kemba Walker back!

After a month and a half off, Walker came off the bench last night for the Hornets, and looked like Louis C.K.’s nethers. Rusty. 2-9 from the field for 6/1/2/0/1 with a TO in 16 minutes. While there’s no need to be harsh – we expected some rust after knee surgery – but Mo Williams played pretty well with 8 dimes and Gerald Henderson shocked the world with a career-high 11 assists. Ok, “shocked the world” may be a slight overstatement, I could say “it was so shocking it blew all his hair off!” It’s certainly interesting he had a previous career-high 9 dimes just last Sunday, so now there’s two facilitators to battle with. Makes me worried about Kemba’s assists upside, and he’s kinda looking like an Isaiah Canaan clone. Wait, I said I didn’t need to be harsh! That said, Kemba is healthy and has a lot more upside, so obviously worth owning everywhere. I just wouldn’t be shocked (unlike Hendo’s dimebag!) if he’s towards the end of the line if you’re killing Pts/3s and need to stream a stat at the end of week one of the playoffs… Here’s what else went down last night in fantasy basketball action:

Up until this year, Jimmy Butler looked like he was always going to be a Wesley Johnson–Iman Shumpert type of wing. Can get you 13-15 points on a good night, hits a few three balls, shoots crappy from the field and nabs a few steals here and there.

His improvement was steady over his first three seasons, but heading into this year’s fantasy drafts, the thought going through most people’s minds was: This guy’s a sleeper, sure, but Derrick Rose is coming back. If Rose is finally healthy, Butler is a non-factor, and even if he isn’t, we’re not missing out on much.

Right here I instruct you to crank up the volume on your device/computer as loud as you can and click on this link.

Butler came into Friday’s tilt against the Blazers with a string of four straight games where he topped 20, including a 32-point explosion against the Pacers. I’m singling out that Blazers game as a caveat, as Da Bulls entered Portland with no Rose, no Pau Gasol, no Kirk Hinrich and no chance of winning. Butler, who had nine points on 3-13 shooting, joined his teammates in chucking up prayers to try and stay in the game, and almost none of those prayers were answered.

I will say this. The Portland game does expose Butler as a guy who cannot carry a real NBA team. In other words, he is not a healthy Derrick Rose in Derrick Rose’s prime. I think Butler’s value is intrinsically tied to the health of this squad. If, for example, Gasol is healthy, but Rose isn’t, Butler is very valuable. If both are healthy, still valuable, but not as much. If neither is healthy, he will be up and down, struggling against good teams, dominating bad ones.

Long-term, I see a sell-high wing. Yeah, it’ll taste good right now, but later tonight, your significant other will be relegating you to sleeping on the couch. And it won’t be because you snore.

After Mo Williams was moved back into the starting line-up last night, he showed his Rubio-esqueness going 14/3/13 in a fantastic dimebag performance. The chosen player for the open this morning, I asked Mo to interview me and my method for compartmentalizing everything fantasy basketball into a daily recap:

Mo:I feel ya. So what’d you think about my facilitating last night? Pretty sick line back in the starting 5.

JB: Well, I don’t really watch the NBA. There’s no sports I like to watch, so I make them up myself and watch them again, and it’s the best thing… But even in my self-created NBA, it was pretty impressive. The way you can distribute while making time go slow… Or fast… As you please… And how you know it doesn’t exist.

Mo: I have been turning back the clock, that’s for sure! That baby Zach LaVine is way behind me for fantasy these days, right?

JB: There’s a duality to it. So when one thought goes into your mind, it’s not just one thought, it has to bounce off both hemispheres of the brain. When you’re thinking “yes”, you’re thinking “no”. It’s a tool for understanding. It comes from a place of oneness.

Mo: I have no idea what the F you’re saying. Just tell me, am I a good medium-term value until Ricky Rubio gets his ankle all healed up?!

JB: If he wants his muscles to grow, he has to shock them. If you want society to change, you have to shock them. That’s what art is, shocking people.

JB: You never learn anything in school. Think about how many people die in hospitals every day. Med school? What’s up with that!? I still haven’t been to med school and I haven’t died in a hospital, I can’t see how med school is really helping anyone out… Same with LaVine, in whatever universal form he occupies…

With the full 2014-15 Fantasy Basketball Rankings now complete, let’s take a look at the final 50. Sean Connery. Kevin Costner. Tons of Great Depression-esque costumes. I’d imagine if you’re in a deep league and looking at the field below with your last pick or two, you’re feeling something like this:

It’s pretty hopeless, as in 12-teamers these are all likely guys you’re merely starring on your watch list post draft. There’s some questionable talent, some questionable roles, maybe even someone that’ll give you The Grapes of Wrath, but some untapped upside! Here’s my top 200 for the 2014-15 Fantasy Basketball Season (based on 9-cat H2H):